A review of OpenSUSE 10.3, which concludes: “While openSUSE’s efforts to simplify Linux or Window-fy Linux can be commended, the inconsistency in their implementation is its downfall. Opening applications quickly becomes a chore with the excessive amount of clicks needed to find the application you want. The application browser loads slowly, looks cluttered, and uses icons that are too large. Yast has been improved but still feels slow.”
I have not tried 10.3. But I do occasionally check out Suse. And so the reviewers comments did not surprise me. “Ponderously slow” is usually the impression I come away with, too. Exactly why *does* Suse have to be noticeably slower than other distros, year after year, release after release? Is it some point of philosophy about the “right” way to do things?
It’s anything but slow… only yast still is somewhat slow; but much fast-er than in 10.1 and 10.2.
My boot time went from 85 seconds to 45 seconds (Grub to a fully ‘ready’ KDE)… still not the fastest of any distro, but I can certainly live with that number
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Loading applications is faster. Also the system feels more responsive. One of my only issues is that audio tends to skip sometimes when system is under load (not sure but this might have to do with Gstreamer … going to try if it will be better using Xine).
Also I had some problems getting nvidia 3D drivers installed (sax would complain that I did not have a 3D card) but I solved that. And I also got the “Black Cube of Death” after installing Compiz Fusion and rebooting into KDE.
Hopefully most of these things will be fixed through updates.
I recently changed over from Ubuntu Gutsy to OpenSUSE 10.3 and I didn’t find it sluggish at all.
In fact, bootup, shutdown and Application are all quicker and easy to use than previous version (10.1 and 10.2 were very slow), and my specs were in line with the reviewers specs for the test system used.
Then again, I’m used to the GNOME breakdown for Control Center, so ymmv.
The reviewer seemed to concentrate too much on the use of YaST, which actually seemed to integrate in much better than in previous releases to the GNOME infrastructure. I was rather impressed.
I was a bit scared to go to an RPM distro after having apt-get and Synaptic, but their zypper and sofware install has improved quite a bit.
The reviewer seemed to concentrate too much on the use of YaST, which actually seemed to integrate in much better than in previous releases to the GNOME infrastructure. I was rather impressed.
In what way does it integrate ‘with the Gnome infrastructure’? The reviewer’s point was that you have two control centres – YaST and the Control Center. I don’t see much integration happening there, nor are there YaST modules in the Control Centre as there are in KDE.
It looks similar to the control center and the application browser on a superficial level but on a Yast modul level it doesn’t really look and and behave like a GNOME control center module.
Disclaimer: Happy debianist/ubuntist
I downloaded 10.3 (KDE) and gave it a shot, because it had been years since my last SuSE installation (yeah, when it was called SuSE, not openSUSE). While it looks polished (the green artwork is excellent, the Ubuntu guys should take note), its still a bit rough around the edges for my taste.
What I didn’t like:
1) Installation took way longer than it should. It almost drives me nuts.
2) YaST2 is still a pig, and pops up a gazillion windows while updating the repos. Not big deal, but it’s annoying. Moreover, repo adittion/update is slow.
3) When I tried to enable desktop effects the damn thing just refused to work. Restarting X led me to a nice text display. nVidia drivers an all, the thing refused to work. BTW, maybe I missed it, but I couldn’t find the “desktop effects” config screen in QT YaST2.
4) I always add a new panel to KDE to have more space fot the taskbar. This second bar would SIGSEV randomly from time to time.
5) No matter how cool it looks, I find Kickoff useless: Too cluttered to use by mouse, no reason to use it by keyboard (Alt+F2 does the job).
What I did like:
1) YaST2. I love it and hate it at the same time. It’s powerful and easy to use, but sometimes it can be ankward to use.
2) Polished look. The KWin deco looks too “plastic” for my taste, but it looked beautiful nevertheless.
3) The install procedure, while slow, it’s easy and straightforward. By default it configures your partitions to keep your NTFS/FAT partitions safe and separates /home from the rest, both things that other distros should do.
4) No “RPM dependency hell”. I see people bashing RPM based distros because of this. I dunno other distros, but if we talk about 10.3 this is completely false. I installed a good amount of packages with no problems whatsoever.
5) No matter how much people say that openSUSE is slow, 10.3 behaved correctly both in startup times and, in general, all-around performance.
Ubuntu is back, but mostly because I’m used to it and I still like more apt/synaptic over YaST2. I’m sure that previous or current SuSE/openSUSE users will love it.
Edit: Ugh, maybe you OSNews guys should decrease the character limit per post
Sorry.
Edited 2007-10-08 21:07 UTC
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A **long** time ago, back in 1999, Debian was the first Linux distro to have a dependency resolver. Shortly thereafter, in 2000, RedHat wrote up2date, Mandrake wrote urpmi, and Suse added the capability to YAST. This was, as I say, all a very long time ago. Unfortunately, many Debian fans have never gotten the memo, and continue to promote the falsehood of RPM hell.
Apt is probably the fastest of the package managers. And package availability in the Debian world is probably second to none. With that much going for Apt, it’s always seemed odd to me that its fans seem to feel they must resort to spreading disinformation about the competition.
Except package management in Suse is still a mess. I tried installing Audacious, there were 2 different packages with the app and some others with plugins, I did not know which one to choose (is audacious14 newer than audacious? why some plugins do not follow this naming convention?) and YaST started asking me how to resolve this problem. This should not happen at all.
Also, package management module in GTK2 YaST is just terrible. Categories are inconsistent, there are many empty ones, don’t know why.
Edited 2007-10-08 21:54 UTC
If you had two options come up, then you probably had two conflicting repositories enabled. Enabling ubuntu and debian repositories at the same time within *bunutu will result in the same conflict, except that you may not have a choice in which to choose.
Yast does a great job of dependency management, particularly in the way it handles multi-arch (something apt doesn’t do), the fact that it pops up a window asking for guidance is a benefit, at least if you’ve ever had to deal with apt or smart playing hell in *buntu-land by automatically guessing. Which I have.
Apt/deb is fantastic if you only use debian-stable and avoid third-party repos. It’s potentially problematic when you use *buntu or debian-unstable, or third-parties. It gets worse when you try and mix repos for debian spin-offs, and that situation is only going to escalate now that *buntu is becoming a de facto branch of Debian as far as desktop-oriented distros are going.
At the end of the day, neither is perfect, yet neither is as bad as the other likes to say.
I’ve only enabled repositories available via YaST (community, nvidia, vlc, etc). If they’re conflicting with main repositories they should not be there. I’m using Ubuntu with tons of third-party repositories (which nobody is officialy supporting) and I’ve never encountered such problems.
I must agree with that. A good example of bad package management in openSUSE 10.3:
– Install the OS
– Log in and update the OS fully
– Try and install the 1.6.0 java plugin + JRE using openSUSE’s own repositories (nothing new added)
At that point you will be greeted by a “nice” tall and thin window “helpfully” informing you that some dependencies are going to hell and you need to make choices. I don’t have a screenshot, but, try it and show it to a “normal” non-geeky friend and ask them to make a decision; you may end up with a dead system.
I tried this at work, and (funny thing) someone actually froze when they say the vast options given; he actually refused to choose anything because “nothing made sense; some options are way to similar”
The problem here lies with the fact that openSUSE 10.3 is incapable of realising that even though it’s removing the 1.5.0 java plugin + JRE, they are about to be replaced.
And before someone tries to scream “it’s because the newer version is not compatible with A,B and C”, then why have the newer version as an option to install in the first place?
Edited 2007-10-09 10:33
Apt is probably the fastest of the package managers. And package availability in the Debian world is probably second to none. With that much going for Apt, it’s always seemed odd to me that its fans seem to feel they must resort to spreading disinformation about the competition.
I think at least FreeBSD, Gentoo, and Ubuntu have more packages than Debian (although the difference is slight). However, where Debian excels the competition is the quality of packages. The other distros have “second class” packages while in Debian *all* packages are treated as “first class”.
It takes a lot of practice and testing before people are accepted to become Debian package maintainers. Dependencies are carefully checked and there are special Debian tools to check the packaging quality. Reported bugs get fixed. *All* packages receive security updates. These are the reasons why Debian rocks!
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However, where Debian excels the competition is the quality of packages.
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I call BS on that. That Debian packages are somehow of *higher quality* than those of other distros is another falsehood which has been repeated so many times by Debian fans that it is now accepted uncritically. Believe me. I would not tolerate inferior quality packages from, say, CentOS or RHEL on my customers’ servers.
And again, in this post, I see the insinuation that other distros don’t check dependencies carefully, and if you use them you will be stuck in rpm hell.
The Debian FUD machine is still going strong, I see.
Especially since the other distros, such as openSUSE, Fedora and even *buntu, are moving towards automated build systems. Packages are built properly against dependencies, rebuilt when dependencies change, and propogate patches when applied.
Debian deserves props for tackling dependencies and establishing packaging guidelines way back in the day, but wow, time to let go of that and look at things without rose-colored glasses. A dev can pour source code into the openSUSE build-service and have packages automatically built against not only various versions of openSUSE/SLED, but against various versions of linux, including Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian. With dependency resolution. At this point the build-service can provide openSUSE users with any number of newer and cutting-edge packages, updated automatically, without human intervention (unless warranted by a build error).
Debian may have more overall packages, but I’d be willing to bet that openSUSE has equivalent, if not faster, access to the relevant and most modern, or even bleeding-edge, packages that people are actually using. Heck, the KDE4 build-packages auto-update based on svn on a weekly basis, assuming that the code builds without errors, it doesn’t get much more bleeding edge than that.
There’s nothing wrong with the way Debian does things, they’re very good at it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing it better than anyone else. Technology moves fast, and things change, particularly within the span of a decade.
Especially since the other distros, such as openSUSE, Fedora and even *buntu, are moving towards automated build systems. Packages are built properly against dependencies, rebuilt when dependencies change, and propogate patches when applied.
I love the OpenSuse build service and the backports you get available with it. You now have better options to get to those repositories in 10.3. It’s one of the best things about using Suse in my opinion, and knowing that a new package will be available for you without having to install a whole new distro, build from source or chance it with some package you happened to find.
Especially since the other distros, such as openSUSE, Fedora and even *buntu, are moving towards automated build systems.
And you can add Debian to that list, too. For instance, one of the 2007 Google Summer of Code projects has improved the piuparts tool that Debian uses to automatically build and test package archives.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/10/msg00001.html
With *buntu, of course, you should remember that the “universe” and “multiverse” components come with no guarantee of security fixes and support. “Use it at your own risk,” they say.
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/components
The Debian FUD machine
Isn’t that a bit exaggerated?
In any case, I believe “rpm hell”, or “dependency hell”, is a thing of the past for most distributions.
I’m a longtime Debian user, I’ve used Gentoo for 3-4 years, and I’m running one Ubuntu install for a month. I did try OpenSuse betas for 10.3. I still prefer Debian because of, first of all, my experience with Debian, but also because of the large amount of packages in the official repos and the -in general- good quality of the software packages. That doesn’t mean that I believe the quality of packages in other distros is worse. Well, except for Gentoo: I have the impression that the quality of Gentoo packages got worse over the last couple of years, and that is one of the reasons I stopped using it about a year ago.
I think that what plays a much larger role regarding the quality of a certain package, is the capabilities of the package maintainer, and how much he or she takes his job as a serious responsibility. For any distribution, you’ll find package maintainers which are doing an excellent job for their packages, and you’ll find sloppy package maintainers. Maybe this isn’t only about “quality of existing packages”, but also important is the reaction on bug reports, keeping the package uptodate with upstream and so on. But, in general, I believe that most large distros have high quality packages, simply because they have enough developers to maintain their packages.
Not FUD, actually. Four to five years ago I switched from SuSE to Debian. (My first distro had been SuSE 6.0). Recently I tried out OpenSuSE again, and, well, I found even many minor upgrades offered by YOU (YaST online update) were uninstallable due to unresolved dependencies.
I have been a Debian Unstable user for half a decade now, and I rarely ever see dependency issues. Most conflicts are resolved by aptitude in an acceptable way and without intervention.
Therfore I was so stunned by the apparent inability of yast to resolve even trivial issues. My attempts to convince YaST to install the latest (security) upgrades, while trying to have mp3 support, ended up in a complete mess. After just a couple of days I re-formatted the SuSE partition.
However, the most annoying part was the installation process which took unbearably long and was extremely uncomfortable. I tried the online install, because I was unwilling to download and burn 4 CD images.
With Debian, you can download a 9 megs minimal iso, boot from it, then you tell the Debian installer where you are located and it selects the nearest Debian mirror for you and there you go.
With SuSE you have to know the exact URL of the repository, which took me a considerable number of attempts to find out. A number of times, errors in the install process resulted in dead ends, and yast left no option than to restart from scratch, where the Debian installer always allows you to go back and repeat any previous step. Therefore installing OpenSuSE took me something in the order of 4 hours, which is, I would say, intolerable.
Part of that is caused by the fact, that I am simply used to Debian, but much of it is also the fault of the deficient installer.
Edited 2007-10-09 11:40
I call BS on that. That Debian packages are somehow of *higher quality* than those of other distros is another falsehood which has been repeated so many times by Debian fans that it is now accepted uncritically. Believe me. I would not tolerate inferior quality packages from, say, CentOS or RHEL on my customers’ servers.
And again, in this post, I see the insinuation that other distros don’t check dependencies carefully, and if you use them you will be stuck in rpm hell.
The Debian FUD machine is still going strong, I see.
I can see we’re talking about different things. You’re trying to turn this discussion into a .DEB versus .RPM flame war, but that was not the intention of my comment. There are many more distros out there in addition to Debian, openSUSE, CentOS, and RHEL. The current DistroWatch database summary lists 366 active distributions. I have used about two dozens of them and I can tell you that the overall quality of packages (packaging policies, dependency resolving, bug tracking, security updates) can vary a lot from one distro to another.
Please read my comment in that larger context and you’ll find that it doesn’t contain the BS, insinuations, or FUD that you see there.
“3) The install procedure, while slow, it’s easy and straightforward. By default it configures your partitions to keep your NTFS/FAT partitions safe and separates /home from the rest, both things that other distros should do. “
Having separated partitions for different parts of the system is a good idea (e. g. for backup purposes where simply the whole partition can be dumped and restored, or for better data consistencies in case of crashes), allthough it has disadvantages (fixed size). I welcome this decision. It’s what you usually do when you create a BSD based system. Furthermore, it is a good solution for those who want their “data partition” (/home) on a different physical hard disk.
I don’t necessarily agree with your points, but I’m going to ++ you because it’s nice to see an honest and balanced opinion, something that seems to be lacking lately…
your installation takes so long because you downloaded the CD version and most of the packages have to be downloaded rather than copied from the local media. Yes the installer does not specifically say that it’s downloading unless you go in the details view but installation goes a lot faster if you use DVD. As far as the article goes yast is quite fast on a 64 bit machine and this is actually one of the few 64 bit distros that is actually faster than the 32 bit counterpart. Very nicely done! The start menu becomes quite a drag after a while. Yes in KDE you have an integrated start menu rather than a window with all the apps in it but it’s still a little bit slower than the standard way of doing things with a tree like menu and no transition effects. And searching for applications every time you want to open them is really stupid and slow. But you can customize the desktop to your liking and create a more usable bar with shortcuts. I only wish it was possible to switch back to *classic view* just like you can in windows.
All the rest of the gripes of the original article a total BS. Suse is the most polished free linux distro there is and 10.3 is the best work that I have seen. It installs fonts by default includes flash and java by default although there are some quirks that you have to know. For example if you do not agree with the licensing agreement of java 1.5 then it goes to 1.6 rather than asking you which one you want first. Yes you can go in the advanced installation mode and manually select but why do you have a regular mode then? But like I said those are only quirks and not shortcomings.
The reviewer doesn’t mention that you can mark apps as favorites and then he will only need 2 clicks to start his favorite app (compared to 3 clicks on the default Gnome setup)
And by using the integrated Beagle search or the search field in the application applet he can easily find and start any app he have installed. In stock Gnome setup it is sometimes necessary to scan several application folders and even then I sometimes overlook the application I’m searching for.
Application launchers on panel are the Gnome’s “favourites” and they’re just one click away. Just like the reviewer I feel lost in lots of big colourful icons. I was never confused by application categories in Gnome, simple clean lists are easier to understand for me.
Suse menu is overcomplicated, not to mention many bugs. For example, while fonts are finally fixed, some of button captions do not fit them and are cut in the middle.
The reviewer is absolutely correct that install takes way to long. But once installed I found it to be responsive. YaST seems improved, it loads fast, some of the plugins(?) seemed to take a while when invoked.
I didn’t see where the reviewer mentioned what hardware was used in the review. SUSE has never been the best distro for older hardware,there are other distros targeting this market.
I didn’t find any glaring problems with this release, everything worked as one would expect it to. Still, overall, this release is no threat to my current desktop (Linux Mint).
> The reviewer is absolutely correct that install takes way to long.
This is not true. Please see http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3019
The reason it takes longer is because you left the option selected to “grab extra packages from the Internet”. This will provide you with all the non-oss stuff you want (as the OSS CD is strictly open-source), but it will take longer since it will grab them from the Internet.
If you do an offline installation then it takes roughly 20-25 minutes. Not very long by anyone’s count, is it?
Quite a few misconceptions in this review (which I mentioned in the review itself — interesting to see that the user submitted their own ‘negative’ review of openSUSE to OSNews: how curious), but what I really find curious sometimes in different OSS communities is people making the statement “it’s like Windows!!” People say it about desktop environments and sometimes about distributions (like here).
Can I just say: this statement is completely pointless. I don’t think anyone is ever trying to do things like Windows for the sake of it. If it just-so-happens that some difference reminds you of Windows, why the heck do you think any sort of Winowsifying is involved? I’ve never seen a shred of evidence in all my years of hearing that statement.
In this review I presume they’ve said it because they have a different, single menu for GNOME. Well, all the research and the reasons for choosing such a menu (and the Kickoff one) are fully available. The usability research is not exactly secret. Usability studies indicate that things go a LOT smoother this way. No-one in openSUSE, afaik, has *ever* done anything because they’re “trying to make it like Windows”.
One point that I would like to mention is the cluttered installation process. Lots of options, lots of stuff that could be automated. I prefer Ubuntu’s simple approach.
This is _not_ a rant, this is _not_ saying that Ubuntu is better than SUSE. Ot’s just a comparison of _one_ feature.
The review is ridiculously oversimplified with more screenshots then meaningful observations.
Suse has always been KDE distro, though KDE has been barely mentioned.
Suse’s installation is one of the best in business though it’s been bashed without any real arguments. The whole installation process has been “covered” with screencaps only! How lame is that!
Dude, go buy yourself a clue.
Edited 2007-10-08 22:36
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That’s because Suse *used to be* a KDE distro. It’s a Gnome distro now. But the review *does* mention KDE, to describe the things, like desktop effects, which are not only unsupported, but actually don’t work if you use KDE with Suse. You might want to invest in a clue yourself, my friend.
That’s because Suse *used to be* a KDE distro. It’s a Gnome distro now. But the review *does* mention KDE, to describe the things, like desktop effects, which are not only unsupported, but actually don’t work if you use KDE with Suse. You might want to invest in a clue yourself, my friend.
SuSE used to be a KDE distro, true. Now it’s largely agnostic about your choice of desktop.
You want Gnome? Fine, you get a well-configured Gnome desktop, and /etc/init.d/xdm starts/stops a SuSE themed gdm session.
You want KDE? Fine. You get a well-configured KDE desktop, and /etc/init.d/xdm starts/stops a SuSE themed kdm session.
There’s even an effort to make the GTK themes and QT themes play nice, to give a consistent environment. All in all, the choice of KDE vs. Gnome makes less difference on SuSE than most distros.
Finally, I have compiz fusion with KDE and twinview working on my office desktop, so I have to disagree with your statement (and the reviewer’s) about desktop effects not working with KDE and SuSE.
I’m using NVidia with AIGLX, rather than XGL, and it did take some manual configuration to make everyone happy, so I’ll agree that it’s not easy or straightforward.
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I’m using NVidia with AIGLX, rather than XGL, and it did take some manual configuration to make everyone happy, so I’ll agree that it’s not easy or straightforward.
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I’m shocked that OpenSuse is still using XGL. Not only does it require one to have to run not one but two X Servers during normal use, but if you want to, say, run a 3D game… you have to start yet a *third* X Server. Last I checked, anyway. I took one look at how clunky XGL was, switched to AIGLX and never looked back. Except that then I switched back to a regular 2D desktop since Compiz Fusion is still so very buggy.
I’m shocked that OpenSuse is still using XGL. Not only does it require one to have to run not one but two X Servers during normal use, but if you want to, say, run a 3D game… you have to start yet a *third* X Server. Last I checked, anyway. I took one look at how clunky XGL was, switched to AIGLX and never looked back. Except that then I switched back to a regular 2D desktop since Compiz Fusion is still so very buggy.
Mark this one on the calendar, I completely agree with you.
I’ll grant that XGL will probably run on more systems without issues, but that’s a serious case of least-common-denominator thinking.
Compiz Fusion is getting better, though… I’ve almost got it up to the level I expect from KWin on dual monitors– window placement isn’t quite there, and the screensaver occasionally starts… “off-center” for lack of a better description. Even with some of the workarounds installed, it’s close, but not quite.
openSuSE 10.3 is the first time I’ve considered staying with Compiz/KDE enabled, though, so progress is happening.
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I just happen to have one of those stick-on smiley faces from Office Depot. You know, the kind with the glitter on them? Right here in front of me. Done! 😉
The issue I always seem to have with Compiz is that it suddenly starts forgetting to decorate the windows for no apparent reason. No borders. No title bar or buttons. No way to actually manage the windows. Somehow it also “knows” to wait until I am working on some time critical task for a client to do it. Not sure who put that heuristic in there, or how it was done. I quickly turn turn the damned thing off, switch back to Metacity, curse it under my breath, and go on.
I also have some serious doubts about the actual usability benefits of most of the composited stuff. Most of them seem like usability *deficits* to me. 😉
The issue I always seem to have with Compiz is that it suddenly starts forgetting to decorate the windows for no apparent reason. No borders. No title bar or buttons. No way to actually manage the windows.
I’ve had that as well. Things get even weirder when you start running Java and other types of application.
I also have some serious doubts about the actual usability benefits of most of the composited stuff. Most of them seem like usability *deficits* to me. 😉
I just think to get all this stuff to work properly, it has to be in the default window manager. All this separate XGL, AIGLX and Compiz stuff is just a recipe for things not working.
I see very little difference as to whether compositing is implemented in the default window managers or not. Either way they would have to use the same technology and path to get the same effect. having it in metacity or Kwin makes no difference. Compiz does have issues, it’s an unstable window manager, that is relatively young in comparison to metacity or kwin, bu the same can be said about compositing in either. Some of the issues that are blamed on compiz should actually be attributed to AIGLX, and can be seen in Kwin4 in their full glory, though to be fair Kwin4 is still in beta. The only thing I don’t like about compiz is that it doesn’t have a 2d fallback that is as seemless as Vista’s, however with the crash handler it just runs metacity and so there is no difference in terms of aesthetics between the two it shouldn’t really be all that big an issue. Compiz is still young but it has potential and its only been in the last 6 months or so where the community has stabilized, give it time. BTW, I use Ubuntu gutsy and have had no issues whatsoever with compiz-fusion, its relatively stable and I haven’t had to turn it off to do something in about a month, which I think is a great improvement.
I see very little difference as to whether compositing is implemented in the default window managers or not.
Then you don’t see the benefits of better communication, better integration with the desktop, bugs being identified and fixed quicker and the issue of people and developers using the window manager day-to-day to improve its quality. Compiz is simply never going to work as well with KDE or Gnome as KWin or Metacity.
Er, no. openSUSE is not a Gnome distro. They employ more paid KDE developers than any other distro, they customize KDE with little touches and improvements that the other distros can’t do since they rely on upstream support, the majority of improvements in 10.2 and 10.3 were KDE-oriented, they (in a sadly misdirected effort) went to great lengths to isolate Gnome-dependencies from mono to make it more palatable for KDE users, they created key KDE components like kpowersave, knetworkmanager and kickoff, which is becoming the (sadly) default menu for KDE 4.0.
Really, openSUSE is to KDE and Gnome, as Ubuntu is to Gnome and KDE.
Just provided some above, help yourself to any of them…
it’s totally false, i’m using opensuse 10.3 compiz fusion with kde here and it works like a charm, installed with one single click:
http://news.opensuse.org/?p=167
That’s because Suse *used to be* a KDE distro. It’s a Gnome distro now.
Quite frankly, I don’t see that from the quality of the software. Suse is still the best KDE distro around, and despite all this supposed focus on Gnome after all these years, Suse’s Gnome implementation still has a fair few problems as outlined in this review. You can’t say that it’s any better than Ubuntu’s, for example.
Additionally, if you look around on the OpenSuse forums, you will see that the vast majority of OpenSuse users still use KDE, so I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to tell us. All the reviewer has done is review OpenSuse, but with a Gnome desktop. He’s not making any sweeping statement by doing that.
But the review *does* mention KDE, to describe the things, like desktop effects, which are not only unsupported, but actually don’t work if you use KDE with Suse.
For those of us who’ve used them, some would say that they’re still unsupported even in Gnome, because they don’t work a lot of the time. I’m not entirely sure what ‘unsupported’ is supposed to mean there, other than some half-hearted attempt to tell us that things work far better in one desktop environment than the other because of better support – which they don’t. It isn’t going to make any more OpenSuse users actually use Gnome, nor are spikes in desktop surveys ;-).
You might want to invest in a clue yourself, my friend.
So might you. Making statements about various things does not make them true in reality. You would have thought people would have learned that by now.
I find Suse 10.3 a huge improvement over 10.2. It boots faster, suspend to disk works really well and software installation has been hugely improved.
The broadcom wireless cards finally work, once the necessary firmware has been downloaded and they even provide a script for it.
Make sure that you have an existing ethernet connection working and just open any terminal and type:
install_bcm43xx_firmware
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Nice for Suse users, I guess. But Ubuntu has supported these chipsets, with Free drivers, without dropping to the command line for well over a year. Possibly a year and a half.
“Nice for Suse users, I guess. But Ubuntu has supported these chipsets, with Free drivers, without dropping to the command line for well over a year. Possibly a year and a half.”
I think you’re mistaken. According to [1], Gutsy is the first version able to download non-distributable firmware for Free drivers.
[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/gutsybeta
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I think you’re mistaken. According to [1], Gutsy is the first version able to download non-distributable firmware for Free drivers.
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Gutsy will be the first version in which the firmware is downloadable and installable via the restricted drivers manager. For the last two or three releases, you have been able to select fwcutter in Synaptic and during the installation it asks if you want it to go out and get the firmware. You click “OK” and it gets the firmware, installs it, and you are good to go.
So no, I am not mistaken. My laptop has a Broadcom 4318 chipset, you see.
You are wrong.
I dual-boot Ubuntu and Suse on this laptop and Gutsy is the first version that a) recognizes this card and b) is able to download the firmware through the restricted driver manager.
> Yast is faster than before but it still feels bloated and slow.
Could you explain?
I have been running since the beta and I have not found anything similar to the reviewer but I always use gnome.
I like SUSE and have used it for a long, long time, so I will say this: this release is what 10.0 should have been. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and Im impressed. (dont bork 11.0)
It’s definitely worth checking out.
I was so impressed at Suse 10.3 I just bought one of those Dell Ubuntu machines for a dedicated Suse 10.3 install. The new menu is nice and bootup is really fast as is shutdown. For someone who doesn’t like to keep the machines on when not in use I would recommend Suse 10.3.
The artwork is brilliant and the post-install distro is polished. The “install” seems patched together but hey it works and it’s not Novell Desktop (bought a license for that) but it comes really close.
I am looking to using this distro and seeing what was done to linux in the past year and a half since I retired from distro testing and went with Vista via a technet subscription.
I admire the attention to useability out of the box, which the open suse community has hit right on the head. Hardware detection is flawless as is the Xorg screen setup. No tweaking needed.
Nice so far, but hey it’s been what 2 days?
This weekend I decided that my Fedora 5 installation was getting a little long in the tooth, and Fedora 8 is still a little ways away. So, with the release Opensuse 10.3, I decided, to give it a spin, and if I didn’t like it, I would reinstall when Fedora 8 was released.
Pros
Much, Much better than 10.0
boot up only took about 40 secs.
Package management was better than I expected, adding repos was easy
The entire distro felt really snappy and fast
Easy to install mp3 support, wmv, etc..
Cons
Really just one, fonts, absolutely horrible, especially with firefox. I downloaded all the fonts I could, including the Microsoft True type, and it didn’t make a difference (granted, there might of been an easy fix, but I couldn’t find it)
Overall, I liked the distro, installation was easy, took a bit of time, but it went very smoothly, however, my problem with the horrible font rendering is the reason Opensuse 10.3 is no longer on my system (now using Fedora 7).
I use both Fedora and openSUSE. They both have the same fonts.
Look in YaST (which some love to hate so much) under ‘system’ -> ‘system settings’ to find the settings of the I/O scheduler.
Or rather not. Sorry my mistake. It is CFQ, and it does not save the settings on reboot.
Edited 2007-10-09 07:00
Fedora use CFQ for long time (FC3 ?).
we couldn’t get the one click nvidia install to work on the day of release.
the fluendo MP3 option looked overly involved and possibly included credit card numbers, so we went the long way around and stripped out the suse amarok. this is a ballache.
where is my auto-configure AIGLX option! XGL is stoneage stuff.
the whole auto repository selection wasn’t as easy as advertised.
Although 10.3 has a special button for adding community repositories, the packages still badly integrate with the mainstream packages. All to often you can experience a dependancy error or a dependancy checker timeout.
In addition 10.3 doesn’t have the availability of good mirrors as ubuntu has.
Yes the artwork is cool as usual. But overall thereis still plenty of room for improvement. Integrating apt for example as default package management tool. The repo cache shouldn’t allways be refreshed every single time you install a package.
I don’t want to rant, let alone troll. I make a habit of running several different flavors on my machines. On one of them, I still run SuSE 9.3, the last decent SuSE distro without nagging bugs, if I may say so. After that, Novell spoiled it. Again, don’t wanna troll.
I see a trend that troubles me. The basic functionality – and I’m a sucker for the command line – gets more and more hidden behind bells ‘n whistles a.k.a eye candy. Something that Ubuntu also suffers from.
My favorite distro’s are Zenwalk and Arch, because most things just work if you know what you’re doing, and you’re up and go in minutes after an install.
What puts me off and makes me mad is that both the latest Gutsy beta and OpenSuSE 10.3 don’t have working dhcp after the installer finishes. It’s outrageous. I have to /etc/rc.d/network restart on SuSE. WTF?? Having swappable harddisks and running like 10 different distro’s on the two machines that show this bug, I must say that other distro’s don’t have this shortcoming.
Second: Yast is blended into some post-zen like interface, that I don’t like. Have you noticed: during install yast still looks like the old SuSE, while it after that transforms into some hybrid zen/gnome/whatever structure.
Before I forget: just like with previous versions of OpenSuSE 10.x, compiz works, but you loose the mouse functionality.
On the plus side, I like the “all inclusive” ring OpenSuSE has to it. But that networking error stops the show.
Edited 2007-10-09 08:24
When you need to launch an application not listed under “Favorite appplications” or “Recently Used” you then have to click the “More Applications” button and then wait for another popup applet “Application Browser”.
Agreed. In order to try and cut down the menu and be simplified, if you want something in the menu that isn’t there (and you invariably do) then you’ve got a long way to go to get it. The menu also gives you the bad impression that the applications in that list are the only applications available on your system. The only way is to find some way of getting the application you want into that favourites list.
Once you get the additional applications application(!) up, you then have to find your application in a large list. I can’t see what value there is in opening a new application just to get a list of other applications on your system.
I can’t really believe they’ve put lots of usability testing into this. The KDE one is even worse.
An example of this would be “Yast” and “Control Center”, which provides most of the same functions – yet exists separately to cause confusion.
Agree with that. It’s been a problem in many distros like Mandrake for years, and it’s utterly confusing. It’s the same with the KDE side of things as well, although they do have some half-hearted KControl modules.
Yes it is faster than prior versions, but compared to other Linux options, YAST feels bloated and slow.
Yep. It still needs to go through several batches of checking every time I do something, for some reason.
You don’t get “desktop effects” with the KDE version and trying to setup Compiz in KDE resulted in my system exhibiting strange behaviors (white cube of death).
Well, I’ve had it up and running with KDE with relatively little effort. I still don’t trust Compiz though, on either KDE or Gnome. Weird things happen at odd times. I’d rather this functionality was rolled into the default window manager, Metacity or KWin. This is happening with KWin for KDE 4 thankfully, so we can wave goodbye to additional window managers for this stuff.
As an example when you open up “Software Management” the program first updates all the repositories (30-45 seconds) before you can even start browsing.
You generally have to switch off refresh on the repositories, but even then, refreshing the list takes ages.
If you want to change a simple setting like screensaver, good luck clicking between those similar apps and browsing through way too many applets to find that function.
Doesn’t happen with me. I just right-click on the desktop and select ‘Configure Desktop’. I don’t know what everyone else does.
A good page with a lot of new features can be found here:
http://news.opensuse.org/?p=341
Love the new upgrader and updater applet, better merging of foreign repositories and the Giver application is pretty interesting. How many of us have to think for a second as to how we get files from one machine to another? It’s a common scenario.
First off, when I added the repositories during installation it had to download more packages during the actual install which drove up the time. While it doesn’t require adding the repositories or downloading packages by default I found this to be a bit annoying compared to ubuntu’s one CD install, but by no means a deal breaker.
Secondly, I had a lot of problems getting X to work. I found out that this was created because I use a KVM switch. After removing the switch X configured and worked fine. Compiz just sucked on my computer, but that may have been due to the fact that it uses a low end Geforce card. I will say this though. Out of all the distro’s that I’ve used openSuse is the only one that balks at the KVM switch.
Lastly. I don’t like the openSuse KDE menu system. I thought I would. It looks nice and does have some useful features, but in reality it’s just a pain to navigate compared to the standard KDE menu system.
All in all openSuse is a nice distro. It was plenty fast for me. While it had some things that I didn’t like or thought were flaws I’d still use it. However, I would still choose ubuntu over openSuse. Just a personal preference though.
The infighting and distro pissing contest that follows every new review about a distro. =)
And people wonder why the year of the Linux desktop hasn’t happened yet?
Anyway, on topic….I’ve been running 10.3 the last few days (x64, Gnome only) and it’s solid, fast, and polished. I actually prefer it right now to Ubuntu, though I really like that too.
For work, 10.3 is the best fit though, as it works with my particular nVidia card better, and runs VMWare 6 really, really well.
I continue to think YAST, while not the fastest thing in the world, is fantastic. I wish Ubuntu would do something similar.
… and it was a waste fo time and bandwidth.
I wanted to try the new Gnome 2.20.0 and give OpenSuse a chance but it has plenty of bugs, at least in OpenSuse; I don’t really expect that Suse would be better.
Now I understand why DELL choose Ubuntu rather then a more commercial distribution; like Suse-Novell.
This OpenSuse and Fedora give Linux a bad impression to newcommers ! This is my opinion, OK ?
.rpm dependency still exists !
I tried to install GVIM and got my first dependency problem. Also ther gvim menu doesn’t work out of the box (dunno why+don’t care)- it just doesn’t work. I tried to install Web Fonts and no luck ! O had to doenload an old rpm and rpm -ivh to get Microsoft fonts. Yast couldn’t search this fonts !
Why ? I don’t care why – I just checked the repos on yast and all was OK.
The yast2 is a problem to work with. You can’t find find what you want quickly (or slowly).
Also, the software installation loads the repositories every time !?! If you just want to install a small app like the rxvt terminal it will load all of the repositories you decided to choose and it will use CPU cycles unnecessarily ! (Slowing you down in the process) Are you kidding me ?
I am thinking about writing my own review since the reviews I had read before downloading SUSE-GNOME-CD said it was “better”. Is this better ? No.
Very good hardware handling is a strong point in Suse !
I have to say, for unbiased sake, that OpenSuse is fast (not slow) to boot. This is good, of course.
It’s slow on system configuration and software installation. I even tried the yast2 in text mode – to avoid the potentially new GTK-yast2 bugs – but it’s also slow and awkward.
well i also tried opensuse 10.3 x64 dvd and I must admit it was not a pleasant experience. It had a really positive vibe on the internet the past few weeks and the grub / bootsplash are really smooth. the boot was quite fast too so i had such high hopes.
*) it killed my MS Vista partition, i could not boot vista at all anymore. While this is in fact a good thing …. i don’t think it was supposed to do that, it did make me delete windows alltogether now 😉
*) the default (gnome and kde) desktops look really polished …… but oh my the fonts are SO ugly. especially in firefix. Fedora and OpenSolaris are SO much better at this
*) it detected my 24″ tft screen correctly …. but it is the ONLY distro to date that couldn’t display 1920×1200@50 on it, it just gave me a black screen
*) yast has imprived but it is still rather slow and refreshes All The Time making me wait over and over. also the refresh animation looks strangely out of place compared to my gtk theme
*) it is still rpm based …. this is just a personal opinion but i prefer .deb or pacman oriented distros, in a couple of days I had LOTS of dependency troubles already
*) why are there SO many options in the control center, i mean around 8 icons regarding software packages/updates it is just too much. Ubuntu has too many tools (synaptic, add/rem, apt, aptitude) but this is just insane.
*) the SLAB is very slow, memory intensive and not very nice to work with, i mean a popup window for starting apps …… come one already
*) there is SO much stuff installed by default …. admitted that this is just a case of personal preference and stuff can be unselected during install
*) it has xorg 7.2 and i understand that it will keep xorg 7.2 during the entire lifetime of 10.3. i would have preferred xorg7.3 with my nvidia quadro
*) suspend to ram did not work
*) wireless did not work at all using either network manager, i had to bring it up manually using ifup and at the office switch back manually toth network manager.
*) OOo was rather slow, compared to other 2.3 offerings. especially to boot.
so all in all a rather disappointing experience, not unlike 10.2 for me. I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised because it would work great as a business desktop, but i will wait for Ubuntu 7.10 or Opensolaris Indiana this month.
i have since deleted it (and vista now too just too bad about all my outlook contacts and photoshop cs3) and replaced it with Opensuse SXDE nv_73. now That is a slick looking gnome desktop (2.18 still and unfortunately no package management yet).
Is there no-one else out there who tries “Update” instead of “Install”?
Am I the only one who gets “unresolved Hell” trying to do that?
Oh, and suggesting to use a library even though it changes provider, how about having that choice propagate through to the other dependencies for the same lib too???
Installed the KDE version last night. Went very smooth. Runs faster then Ubuntu on my (1.7 Celeron / 256MB) box.
Just my two cents,
Paul
I installed the DVD with a kde desktop today and it worked flawlessly, including the one-click codec installation.
good work suse devs.
I’m loving the over all look and feel. The green is great. The artwork is excellent.
I’m starting to really like Yast, as I get more used to it.
I love the the “One Click Install”, it’s super smooth, easy, and fast.
The overall system just feels solid.
The speed and responsiveness is very good, especially after removing Beagle.
Boot time is the fastest I’ve experienced with any distro. Only Slackware comes close.
The software repositories are extensive. They’re not as extensive as Debian/Ubuntu’s, but still great. And with Java and Mono stuff (yes, I’m a programmer by profession) is more extensive, complete, and up to date (Eclipse in SuSE repos is 3.3, in Ubuntu it’s 3.2, for instance).
I did not like the application browser at all at first. But it has grown on me. It’s slow the first time it’s loaded, but fast every time there after. And yes, it does involve more clicks than a regular menu. But it looks really nice, and it’s easy and intuitive to browse. Besides, it’s easy to remove the regular “Computer” menu, and replace it with the standard Gnome menu bar.
I like the codec installer. When I clicked one of the pre-configured streams in Banshee, it did not have the necessary fluendo codec, but asked me if I wanted it to go fetch it, which it did from the “One Click Install” site, and about 30 seconds later it worked. Great stuff.
I earlier complained about the super long install. But that was my fault because I left the “enable online repositories” checkbox checked. This caused it download another gig or so of packages, and it took 2-1/2 hours to complete the install. When I tried doing another install, I unchecked this option, and it took 40 minutes (this is on a cheapo lappy that has a 1.2 GHz Via chip – if it were on faster/more up to date cpu, it would have taken half the time.
I’ve never been a regular SuSE user before. I’ve occasionally dabbled with it, but never stuck with it. But this time, I’m really really liking it, a lot. It’s going to stick around has my primary OS on my laptop for awhile.
I might also dual boot it with Ubuntu via Lubi.